The highlight of the novel scheme is its plan to text SMS alert to parents of children who are found absent when attendance was marked in the morning, Mayor M Subramanian said here.

The software, which has been developed at a cost of Rs 2.5 lakh, would help the civic body have better management of its schools and enable its officials to monitor each and every detail of all the schools through network interface, he told reporters.

An official of the Parinamam Software Solutions which has developed the software for the civic body said SMS carrying the name of the student and his/her class will be sent by the headmaster to the parents immediately after the morning attendance.

“The application has been designed in such a way that the SMS would be sent almost instantaneously to those parents whose children were found absent after the cut-off time for attendance in schools. A staff in every school will be given charge to update the attendance on time,” he told Express.

The software would also have a database of students and staff working in the schools, and the details of marks scored by students, both term-wise and year-wise, for analytical purposes by the higher officials of the department as well as their parents.

On day one, the project was implemented at the Corporation Girls Higher Secondary School in Nungambakkam after uploading a detailed database of its 816 students and 36 teachers. It will be expanded to the remaining 26 such higher secondary schools within a month.

The next phase will see the scheme implemented in all the 285 schools of the civic body. That would enable it to serve as a platform for the higher officials and the corporation’s education department, besides the school officials, teachers, students and their parents to exchange views on different issues pertaining to quality education.

Filters in air conditioners gather dust, minute particles and airborne pollutants, while circulating cool air in a closed area. If a swine flu infected person coughs or sneezes in an air-conditioned room, the virus may travel up to the filters and settle down there.

“The virus in the filter then starts circulating along with cool air,” Dr P Guhanatham, Chennai Corporation Health Officer, said.

Some of the other precautionary measures are frequent gargling with warm salt water and washing hands and nostrils regularly.

Besides the pamphlet, the Corporation has come up with posters to spread awareness about containing the disease.

Allaying fears of swine flu, Guhanathan said the situation was not as alarming as reported in the media.

According to him, out of 10,000 people tested for H1N1 virus in the last two days by the Corporation officials, only one had shown symptoms of the disease.

He said: “Even people with violent coughing, sneezing or running nose can move around in public places like cinema halls, hospitals, trains and buses with a mask.”